Recently in Los Angeles Category

Faced with the prospect of closing libraries on Sundays and shorter hours of operation the rest of the week, Santa Clarita is moving to turn operation of its libraries over to a private company.

Officials believe it will reduce costs by a third and allow them to use the money to expand the collects of books, audio books and other materials.

Los Angeles has different ideas about how to deal with its budget crisis -- confusing and contradictory as its policies might be.

Libraries were the first to go. More than a third of the staff was fired and libraries reduced to only five days of operation and hours shortened.

In the case of city-owned parking garages which have huge debt burdens and generate a fraction of the income they would if well run, LA is looking to lease them for 50 years to one or more private companies.

As things stand now, the city expects to get $53 million upfront and would use the money to keep a few thousand employees in their jobs until next July when the estimated $320 million deficit that looms will force even more drastic cuts in services and layoffs of workers.

The opposite approach is being taken with regards to the golf cart concession at city-owned golf courses.

Since 1975, the J.H. Kishi Co. -- thanks to the heavy political influence of Michael Yamaki -- has held the concession despite a couple of fires in its golf cart barns, complaints about aged carts and questions about whether the city was being paid its full share of the proceeds.

For the last eight years, Kishi has held the contract on a month-to-month basis while city officials dickered and dawdled about new lease terms.

In 2008, the Recreation and Parks Commission agreed with a staff recommendation and awarded the contract to Michael Bernback's Ready Golf, operator of the driving range at Balboa-Encino in expectation of increased revenue to the city and brand-new carts with GPS. (See earlier stories LA's China Syndrome and Death of a City).

But the Council -- even in the midst of soaring budget deficits -- preferred to play politics and pander to special interests over serving the public so the contract was nixed and Kishi kept the concession month-to-month.

On Wednesday, the golf cart fiasco took yet another turn.

GM Jon Kirk Mukri, in a lengthy report to the Commission, (RAP-golfcarts.pdf) outlined what a travesty the golf cart concession has become.

His recommendation: "Reject all proposals received on July 24, 2007, for the Electric Golf Carts Rental Concession ... terminate Concession Agreement No. 227 between the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks and J. H. Kishi Company ... Direct staff to self-operate the electric golf cart rental operation."

The commission unanimously adopted his proposal with Chairman Barry Sanders admitting that "if I were a potential contractor under these rules, I would think twice" before submitting a proposal

That's exactly Bernback's take: "They don't have the budget ... They don't have the experience. And the union employees are so much more expensive than the nonunion employees."

Get it?

They are un-privatizing the golf cart concession even though city labor costs are far higher than those of Kishi or Ready Golf, which means less revenue to the city treasury for other services like parks programs for kids that are about to be gutted because of massive layoffs of Rec and Parks workers.

They don't even have a plan for how city workers would run the golf cart concession and may hire some or all of Kishi's workers who would be delighted to learn they would be paid twice as much, have full health care and lifetime pensions of up to 75 percent of their highest salary.

The likely case is that all 40 of Kishi's employees will be fired and other city workers facing layoffs will get their jobs and keep their salaries and benefits.

None of this serves the public interest. It only serves the political interests of the Council and mayor who get to keep the contract with Kishi indefinitely while a plan is worked out and to pander to the unions by protecting their jobs at the public expense.

But what's the Rec and Parks GM Mukri to do?

Like other department heads, he is subject to frequent bullying and threats from the mayor's minion and being overruled by the obedient commissioners the mayor appoints.

This is no way to run a city.

The limits on freedom of speech are clear enough: You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater and you can't reveal the movements of ships and troops at a time of way.

The limits on the access to government information is quite different.

What's so amazing about local government, and every other level as well, is how officials not only kept information secret from the public but themselves as well.

The City Council, for one of a thousand examples, didn't know that when they tripled the trash fee in the name of full cost recovery of services to the public, they exempted thousands of households at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

For its part, the LAUSD has refused every entreaty for years to examine the data from standardized tests to see what they could learn about the success of classroom teachers in raising the scores of their students over time.

Publication by the LA Times of how 6,000 teachers' students scored on tests and the questions that raised about performance have sent the unions and education lobby into a tizzy.

Their cry is that test score performance is only part of the information needed to evaluate how well a teacher is doing.

That's true of course but the unions have fought vigorously for years any kind of valid method of "stulling" teachers using subjective standards based on observation and objective standards based on tests.

What the Times' data shows is that some teachers consistently at the bottom with the students in the classes scoring worse than others and that some teachers consistently produce students who show improvement on tests.

It could be that in many cases the best performing teachers are simply teaching to test and doing nothing to really educate their children.

It could also be that many at the bottom are saying to hell with the tests, the kids need their minds opened up, their imaginations sparked to life, to learn to think and comprehend. It could be that the children they teach have better outcomes over time than those who score well on tests.

But without the data and rigorous examination about what is going on and what works and doesn't and for whom, it remains an example of how our public officials prefer the blissful state of ignorance -- as long as they can keep us ignorant to.

For years, local agencies have done their best to keep salary information secret -- a wall that has been chipped away at by the media and blogosphere.

It's only now when the scandals in Bell and Vernon have raised the public ire that LA city and county officials have posted searchable databases with positions and salaries.

Of course, they withhold the names as much as possible even though they are public information under the law and the Constitution and are available online elsewhere in many cases.

For all the promises of transparency, our local government agencies do their best to keep as much information secret as possible or to make it as obscure and hard to understand as possible.

Politicians and bureaucrats have armies of people to make sure that even when information is made available, it is spun to delude and confuse the public.

Openness and transparency in all matters of government is one of the four pillars of the LA Clean Sweep movement (lacleansweep.com).

We need volunteers -- lawyers and people with good research skills -- to step forward to help us become a clearinghouse of information City Hall doesn't want us to know.

We intend to vigorously use the California Public Records Act to get the information the public needs to know to understand what is really going on at City Hall.

Knowledge is power and the name of the game in reforming City Hall and creating a balanced and inclusive public culture is power.

The community will never have the kind of responsive and responsible city government it yearns for without better knowledge and better people in office.

 

EDITOR'S NOTE: Earl Ofari Hutchinson interviewed me Friday about LA Clean Sweep on his radio show on KTYM 1460AM. You can play or download the show by clicking here.

LA Clean Sweep took a major step forward on Sunday with about 100 people showing up for professional training to make them more effective as activists and candidates for public office.

 

Everyone who was there came away feeling they had learned valuable tools that will aid them in the struggle to elect candidates to city office who will put the public interest first - a point emphasized by remarks by City Attorney Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich during a 30-minute appearance.

 

Trutanich was elected last year in no small part by support from the same coalition of community activists who help Paul Krekorian win the CD2 seat and defeat Measure B, the solar energy boondoggle.

 

He made is clear in his remarks that given the political culture of City Hall, its subservience to special interests and the budget crisis, have made public service a challenge every day to do what he believes is right for the city as a whole and its people.

 

The event was not without its moment of controversy.

 

Matt Robbins of the nonprofit American Majority that trains Tea Party activists began the training programs for activists and candidates for city offices with a lengthy presentation on the group's view of U.S. history and how it led to the failure of our governmental institutions today.

 

It is based on a very fundamentalist view of the Constitution as outlined by James Madison and John Adams - not Thomas Jefferson - and blames Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive movement at the start of the 20^th century for federalizing the government.

 

It is a viewpoint that did not sit well with some activists, myself included who believe in Jeffersonian democracy and think Teddy Roosevelt was our greatest president for breaking up the monopolistic cartels and taking the most beautiful lands in America out of private hands by creating the National Parks.

 

An emotional argument ensued that threatened to disrupt the event - an argument that does to the heart of City Hall political machines attacks on Clean Sweep and the misgivings of many activists who share Clean Sweep's goals to get involved.

 

It is no small matter and we must get past it or we will remain divided and powerless while our city officials put the future of the city at risk by slashing basic services, subsidizing unwanted developments with tax dollars and turning a budget crisis into a catastrophe.

 

Clean Sweep's goals are clear and simple. We are trying to bring together people from all over the city regardless of their political views to work in common cause for a greater Los Angeles and to create a new spirit of LA that unites people no matter what their backgrounds or economic condition or political beliefs.

 

We don't have to agree on anything except the need for dramatic change because our city government has failed us.

 

We need new leaders who owe their elections to the people in their district, not the dirty money provided by special interests, officials committed to fiscal responsibility and providing the core services that make a city livable for all its people, to rebuilding the aging infrastructure to create a healthy economic climate and healthy neighborhoods.

 

A new political culture at City Hall where elected officials and the bureaucrats see themselves as servants of the people - not their lords and masters - will not be without its conflicts over policies and programs.

 

Officials with honesty and integrity and reflect the values and interests of the communities they represent will quarrel and conflict our in the open where the public can learn the facts and understand the arguments. They will reach compromises or one side or another will prevail issue by issue.

 

They will not vote unanimously 99.93 percent of the time as our current City Council does without meaningful public debate because the consensus is built in the privacy of back rooms outside the public view.

 

It was a heated and scary moment at Sunday's Clean Sweep meeting but Nick Dalton-Pawle of the Sun Valley Neighborhood Council somehow found the words that quelled the fire of conflict.

 

Nobody walked out and the meeting got down to the basic tools of how to work effectively for change and in the end everyone felt they had learned something about how to work more effectively for their goals, and hopefully how we can all work together for the goals we share.

 

It came down in the end to a choice: Will we break apart and remain a conquered populace because we disagree with or even find abhorrent the views of some on some issues or stand united on the common ground where he can win power and begin the hard job of building a better city for all.

 

This is the choice we all have to make, rich and poor and everyone in between.

 

We will not stop the City Hall political machine from its course of destruction if we got lost in all that divides us. We must find our way to the light of unity.

 

If there's another way, any other way, let those who attack Clean Sweep bring it forward.

 

Four months into into his reign as the ninth DWP General Manager in 10 years, Austin Beutner -- despite working part-time and on a temporary basis -- this week quietly carried out a major reorganization of the utility in part to focus on his goal of using its resources to create jobs and drive economic development.

He has dramatically restructured financial operations and made the key appointment of Kelli Bernard as director of economic development (DWP-changes.pdf) (DWP-financechanges.pdf).

She is a graduate of then Mayor Richard Riordan's Business Team, a former vice president of Genesis LA now led by DWP Commission President Lee Alpert and most recently worked in a non-staff position as Council President Eric Garcetti's planning and economic development director.

Whether those changes are for the common good likely will not be debated or examined by the City Council which is busy trying to protect itself from the wrath of the public enraged by endless rate hikes, failed and contradictory practices and long-time mismanagement of their most valuable and vital asset.

What Beutner has done nothing about are the villains who bear so much responsiblity for what is wrong at the DWP.

On Day One of his term at DWP, Beutner made peace with union bully Brian D'Arcy whose use abusive tactics and threats of strikes that amount to nothing but blackmail have won him a long series of spectacularly lucrative contracts.

"People have made labor the issue and I don't think it's the top issue facing the agency," Beutner said back in April, making it clear that peace at any price would be his policy no matter what the "people" think.

The price of that peace was to leave Raman Raj, D'Aarcy's lackey, in place running the day-to-day operations as chief operating officer, the No.2 position that is more important than ever because most of Beutner's time is spent on his duties as First Deputy Mayor and jobs czar.

D'Arcy and Raj -- what a team to rely on!

Nothing good has ever come, can ever come, with those two in power. Reforms being pushed by the Council like the Rate Payer Advocate, changing the composition of the Board of Commissioners and requiring a timely and public budget are meaningless as long as the people in charge have utterly no respect for the public or the public interest.

D'Arcy's outrageous excesses and destructive behavior were well documented in a "for your eyes only" report to then Mayor James Hahn by DWP Assistant General Manager Mahmud Chaudhry which eventually leaked to the LA Weekly in 2005.

Chaudhry exposed how D"Arcy controls the management, threatens their careers as well as those of city politicians and warns he will turn off the city's water and power if he doesn't get what he wants.

"The DWP has become a fox-run henhouse of epic proportion," Chaudhry wriote. "The union now runs the department. They blur the line between . . . bargaining and criminal extortion.

"By choosing union peace at any price, DWP leadership finds itself paying an exorbitant price. Anxious to avoid conflict, management finally relinquished the duty -- and with it the power -- to exert control. With no one minding the store, it may be a matter of time before the union's extreme bargaining advantage begins to impact the annual [revenue] transfer to the city."

A few months after his report surfaced, Mayor and Antonio Villaraigosa and the Council approved the richest contract in city history with raises of up to 6 percent a year to IBEW Local 18 workers whose salaries already were 30 to 40 percent higher than other city workers in the same jobs or those of private utility workers.

It wasn't long before Villaraigosa brought Raj back to the DWP and foisted him as chief operating officer on David Nahai when he took over as General Manager. He did this in the full knowledge that Raj's previous short stint at the DWP under David Freeman ended disastrously with lawsuits and his dismissal in 2001.

To say the least, there is nothing in Raj's career that suggests he is at all qualified for such a high position -- except for his slavish loyalty to D'Arcy.

Let's start with Raj's personal financial management.

On Feb. 24, 1992, Raj and his wife Mrinalini, then living in Laguna Niguel, filed for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy in the Central District of California, Santa Ana. 

That was done just six days after a judgment of $2,275.31 was entered against him for breach of contract in the North Pomona Courthouse in a case filed by Wells Fargo Bank.

Five years later, on Feb. 20, 1997, Raj encountered another financial problem. The IRS filed a tax lien against him for $16,503. It took him until 2000 when he was working for the DWP to be released from the lien.

Then, there's his rather undistinguished career as a business executive, bouncing from job to job without making the kind of noteworthy successes that ought to be necessary to be the man running the DWP.

He worked as a mid-level executive at Kaiser Permanente, Flying Tigers and the Southland Corp. before a stint as managing director at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority where he was anything but a success. His main task involved labor negotiations and he reportedly was forced to resign after running afoul of upper management.

He did get to connect with labor leaders and ultra-liberals like Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg who helped him land a job at the DWP in 1999 as chief administration officer overseeing labor relations and human resources where he cemented his relationship with D'Arcy and eventually became a supporter of Villaraigosa's in his first mayoral campaign in 2001.

In his job, Raj quickly became embroiled in one of the darkest chapters in DWP history, a long pattern of discriminatory treatment of minorities and women.

The LA Weekly's Jeffrey Anderson wrote a devastating story in 2005 tracing the long sordid history of discrimination and millions of dollars in secret settlements with employees.

Some of the incidents involved misconduct by Raj and led to a 2003 lawsuit

LA Superior Court Case Number BC 290779: Brenda Barr, et al v. City of Los Angeles and DWP and Raman Raj, et al. 

The heart of the allegation was that the working environment at DWP was permeated with discriminatory animus" against women and blacks, specifically that "the individual Defendants schemed to and did create a system which resulted in promotions and pay upgrades to men, while preventing women from advancing."

In 2008 when Raj was brought as COO, far higher than any position he had ever held before, the LA Times reported the Barr cass was settled for $3.3 million 

The article cited a report by DWP's outside consultant,the Texas law firm of Kemp Smith, that concluded Raj moved the utility's anti-discrimination office from a satellite building -- valued for providing a level of anonymity -- into DWP headquarters to discourage complaints, since anyone who entered would have to do so in public view.

The report said Raj manipulated severance packages to remove managers who disagreed with him. And it warned that Raj had given "too much influence in management of the organization" to D'Arcy and shielded union employees from disciplinary action

Recommending he should be let go for the good of the agency, it said Raj could not be trusted to "act in the department's interests when they may conflict with his own agenda."

 

Today, managerial insiders still don't trust Raj, regarding him as devious and duplicitous.

In part, the shadow hanging over Raj derives from what he did for a living between stints at the DWP.

He formed a consultant company, Resources Roundtable, and used his access to  DWP officials to help win contracts for energy-related companies like Itron, Smartsynch and Enspiria that had won nearly $60 million in DWP contracts without the Board of Commissioners knowing of the connection to Raj.

Every decision, every contract that Raj is involved in sparks suspicion about insider dealing, about the inordinate influence of D'Arcy yet Beutner relies on him to run the DWP and talks admiringly of the knowledge and intelligence of the union boss.

How can anyone wonder why it has proven impossible for years to hire a capable and experienced general manager, why rates keep going up and up, why the water and power systems are deteriorating, why the DWP has lost all credibility with its customers, why it is the center of endless controversy.

What is impossible to understand is how Austin Beutner and the mayor can possibly think the DWP is going to be the engine of development and job creation that restores the city's economy.

Structural reforms and political spin are useless unless there is a massive shakeup in the management of the DWP and the city's elected officials find the courage to put D'Arcy in his place.

Next Sunday, LA Clean Sweep -- the voter movement to elect a clean slate to City Council -- will offer professional training to potential candidates and activists who are ready to go to work to end the cycle of failure and bring responsible government to Los Angeles.

Experts in political campaigning will teach you the skills you need to win elections and fight City Hall on the issues that you carry about to protect you neighborhoods, your jobs and your business. The session for activists run from 8:30 a.m. to noon Sunday Aug. 29 at the Mayflower Club, 11110  Victory Blvd., North Hollywood. Training for candidates for the March 2011 City Council elections and the 2013 city elections run from 1 to 5 p.m.

Click here (CSTrainingDayFlyer-1.pdf) or go to lacleansweep.com and click on events for the details. The trainers are providing their services for free and all proceeds from the event will help fund LA Clean Sweep's efforts to inform voters and mobilize forces for reform.

For too long, the concerned residents in all parts of the city have fought their own separate battles against the powerful forces that run City Hall and control our elected officials. LA Clean Sweep. The skills you will learn from this program will help you to work together with people in every part of LA and beat the lobbyists and special interests and help elected candidates who will stand up for the public interest.

Our city officials have been overspending for year,  and even in the face of financial crisis, are making things worse without facing the fundamental issues. Libraries and parks are closing, cuts in the Fire Department are jeopardizing public safety and we are now paying the full cost or many core services in addition to soaring rates, taxes and fees.

The cycle of failure must be broken. It will only if you get involved and get the know-how to fight back successfully against the powerful entrenched interests of City Hall.

We need a new spirit of LA, one that brings together every region of the city, breaks down the barriers of ethnicity and economic status, and celebrates the freedom of possibilities of what should be the greatest place on earth.

Hundreds of activists from every part of the city have worked to develop basic ideas that we can rally around to restore credibility to our city's leadership and fix what is broken so we can move forward together:

Here's what LA Clean Sweep stands for:

THE PLATFORM

Issue No. 1: Clean Up City Hall

L.A. needs a change of leadership. We must elect candidates who demonstrate a firm commitment to promoting the public interest, not special interests. Candidates must commit to end the practice of giving subsidies, waivers, below-cost deals, tax breaks and other special treatment to politically connected individuals, public officials, organizations and businesses.
So that no actions of government are hidden from the public, candidates must commit to enforce and enact open access laws. Slush funds and office holder accounts need to be eliminated. City Hall must never sell, lease or otherwise dispose of public property without obtaining fair market value for it. City Hall must treat all people with dignity, fairness and equality.

 

Issue No. 2: Fix the Budget

City spending is out of control. The city needs to live within its means.  Candidates must commit to support a City Charter amendment to limit the annual increase in city government spending to the rate of growth of inflation and city population. In good economic times, revenues that exceed the expenditure limit should be saved in a rainy day fund. This would allow the city to maintain essential services in an economic downturn.
Elected officials have a history of borrowing against future tax revenues to finance special interest economic development projects. Candidates must commit to stopping this practice, including all projects funded through the Community Redevelopment Agency. Candidates must commit to supporting compensation for city employees that is affordable and sustainable. Without these changes, additional taxes and fees will put an increasing burden on residents and force severe cutbacks in city services.

Issue No. 3: Focus on Core Services

City Hall lacks focus and wastes money. Time that could and should be spent on critical problems is instead frittered away on self-serving resolutions and other minutiae. Candidates must commit to focus on core services: Police, fire, other public safety services, street and sidewalk maintenance, sewage, trash, water and power, parks, libraries, and land use planning. Elected officials should not spend their time or taxpayers' money on matters unrelated to the delivery of core services. 

Issue No. 4: Power Sharing

Government is formed for the benefit of the people, yet City Hall routinely ignores the peoples ' legitimate concerns. Candidates must commit to work with Neighborhood Councils and bona fide community groups on land use, economic development and other local issues. Candidates must commit to redrawing City Council district boundaries to align with established communities. Gerrymandering of council boundaries must end.
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Contribute your time, your passion, your money. Go to lacleansweep.com. Los Angeles will not change without you getting involved.

It took only seven weeks for the LA city budget to blow up.

 

Imagine that: Thousands of six-figure workers with huge lifetime pensions and health benefits, the nation's highest paid municipal elected officials with huge staffs and lucrative perks, and the $4 billion budget they put into effect 49 days ago is no longer valid.

 

And it only gets worse.

 

Revenue projections are turning out to be overly optimistic, as everyone knew when the budget was written The plan to lease parking lots for 50 years is running at least six months late and proving to be a lot less certain than, as everyone knew when the budget was written. Hopes for some sort of Wall Street miracle that would fatten the pension funds and reduce the city's liability are turning out to be pipedreams, as everyone knew when the budget was written.

 

City Hall is sinking into the quicksand of financial mismanagement, chasing declining revenue numbers downhill toward bankruptcy, making matters worse with almost every decision they make - and all the tough decisions they don't have the courage to make.

 

City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana sounded the alarm Tuesday, warning that failure to move quickly on the parking lot deal will lead to up to 1,000 layoffs immediately, force other drastic cost-cutting measures and "lose the option of securitizing parking meter revenue at a future date.

cao-parking-budget08-17.pdf

 

"If we don't have the money this year, we are going to have to take extraordinary steps to make it up," Santana told Rick Orlov of the Daily News.

 

"We would begin the (layoff) process immediately. Any money beyond that will be used to mitigate next year's shortfall, which is at $320 million. If we decide not to go ahead, then we should begin to make the cuts now."

 

He proposes making departments savaged of their senior staff by the costly Early Retirement Incentive Program pay the city's $21.2 million bill - police, fire, planning, City Attorney, transportation and so on.

 

Then, he wants library and parks volunteer programs gutted and $2 million or more from parks, fire and public works programs as well along with increasing the number of furlough days for thousands of city employees from two to three days a month.

 

Almost all these cuts impact the services provided to the tax-paying public which routinely is expected to pay the full cost of most services they do get from trash collection to ambulances.

 

If there is a method to this madness, it is to force the unions to the bargaining table to make concessions.

 

But what would motivate the unions to do that after City Hall has betrayed one deal after another and still doesn't have a plan to actually solve the financial problem?

 

They are running city government as if it were a business that can get rid of the services to the public - those that cost money but making a city livable -- while preserving revenue-generating positions as if turning a profit is the goal.

 

The mission ought to be to create a great city with great core services - not a social welfare system for wealthy and influential developers and corporations.

 

They are drowning in the muck of their failure of leadership and taking us all with them.

Think about this: All the City Council wants to do with the fantasized $53 million from leasing parking structures is to keep the endangered employees on the payroll for nine more months.

They don't have a plan to solve the problem. They face a $320 million deficit next year and a $1 billion deficit the year after.

What will be left when they are done?

ACTION ALERT: The first public hearing on creating an independent Rate Payer Advocate and other reforms of the DWP will be held at 6 p.m. tonight at LAPD's Devonshire Youth Center, Wilbur Avenue and Parthenia Street, in Northridge.

Fortress DWP -- after decades of mismanagement, discrimination and secrecy -- has come under siege from the public and even the City Council.

 

The battle for control of the DWP started as a small insurrection by Neighborhood Council activists who won a Memorandum of Understanding with then General Manager Ron Deaton that gave them for the first time a measure of access to what had become a private company accountable to no one.

 

Flagrant racial and gender discrimination had led to millions of dollars of secret settlements with employees even as their union, the IBEW, was getting sweetheart contracts that drove up wages far beyond industry standards.

 

Tens of millions of dollars were squandered on green energy promotions without actually building any. Billions in private contracts were awarded in back room deals that squandered fortunes even as rates soared and the water and power systems deteriorated from lack of investment.The DWP even quietly sued the city's residents so it could treat their money like play dough.

 

Then, last spring, the small insurrection that had produced folk heroes like NC activist Soledad Garcia and DWP Commissioner Nick Patsaouras turned into an all-out war when Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pushed for yet another rate increase, this one for as much as 28 percent.

 

Fearful as always on the impact on their own political futures, the City Council led by Jan Perry balked at approving the phony Energy Cost Adjustment Factor rate hike.

 

In what has become known as the "ECAF Fiasco," the DWP under the discredited green energy apostle David Freeman and his second-in-command thug Raman Raj resorted to extortion of $73 million promised to the city general fund.

 

Out of that skirmish came Council proposals to reform the DWP by creating an independent office of the Rate Payer Advocate, to change how the Board is appointed and to open up the budget process.

 

Under interim General Manager Austin Beutner, who doubles as the mayor's economic development czar, the DWP is trying to water down all these proposals and resist major reforms.

 

Tonight, the stage is set for the next phase in this escalating war with Perry, Eric Garcetti and Greig Smith holding the first in a series of public meetings on their Charter reform proposals to rein in the DWP.

 

It's being held at 6 p.m. at the LAPD Devonshire Youth Center, Wilbur Avenue and Parthenia Street in Northridge.

 

Beutner, a part-time GM who has defended the DWP's extortion attempt and left day-to-day operations in the hands of Raj, questions the need for major reforms as he did Tuesday in a KPCC interview with Patt Morrison.

He has set up his own team of advisers who met privately last week to talk about more modest changes, such as putting the Rate Payer Advocate in the City Administrative Office under the mayor's control.

 

Who is on the team says a lot more about Beutner's commitment to reform than his talk of transparency and strategic plans: Kristin Eberhard, Legal Director, Western Energy and Climate Projects, Natural Resources Defense Council; Chuck Ray, Vice-Chair, Neighborhood Councils - LADWP Memorandum of Understanding Oversight Committee; Carol E. Schatz, President & Chief Executive Officer, Central City Association of Los Angeles, and Stuart Waldman, President, Valley Industry & Commerce Association (VICA.)

 

This is not a broad-based group and even the DWP's own press release on its first meeting shows just how manipulated it is when promises already have been made to the business community of reduced rates even as residents face higher rates.

 

"We will carefully consider the scope of this office and how it can best fit into the current oversight structure that already exists within the City of Los Angeles," VICA's Waldman is quoted as saying.

In an email report on the panel's meeting, the NC's Ray said: "It was suggested that the name of the entity be "Customer Advocate." It was agreed that the panel would interview and select the Customer Advocate and his key staff."

For her part, Perry has started to assert Council jurisdiction over the opaque contracting practices of the DWP that channel deals to favored firms under ambiguous rules that allow officials to do whatever they want without regard to value, efficiency or the public interest.

 

This is no small matter.

 

It is the time first that the Council has shown any backbone in fighting for the public.

 

It is only because the public is standing up for itself as outrage has built over the endless DWP scandals from workers drinking and going to strip clubs to bursting water mains, from soaring rates that disappear into DWP paychecks, from corrupt contracting to gross mismanagement.

 

This is the fight of every resident and business of the city and will only be won if public pressure is great enough.

 

Fear of the wrath of the people is the only thing City Hall understands.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Once again, the City Council in a 41-minute meeting Tuesday put off without comment discussion of the CRA deal with Hal Katersky's Santa Monica-based Pacifica Ventures, raising questions about what's going on behind the scenes with the controversial subsidized project.

The City Council blinked last week on approving the Community Redevelopment Agency's proposal to sell a valuable Hollywood property at 1601 N. Vine St. to developer Hal Katersky for $4.5 million -- 85 percent less -- than they paid him for it four years ago.

But it's back on the calendar for action today and the CRA is pushing hard to reward Katersky's Pacifica Ventures with this lucrative gift although he is a profiteer in runaway film production that has savaged our local economy and has a history of bad deals and lawsuits.

Last week, before the Council delayed action, we reported on the deal under the headline "Sweetheart Deals and Opportunists: How to Destroy a City."

Today, Jack Humphreville at City Watch LA and Richard Verrier in the LA Times shed more light and raise more questions about Katersky.

In "The Unpleasant Aroma of a CRA Deal," Humphreville digs into the hidden details and questionable financing for this project with union money and shows that the subsidy "the equity returns for the investors are expected to exceed 20%!"

"Why is the CRA even considering subsidizing Katersky and his partner, Dana Arnold, since they are promoting and financing "runaway" production in Albuquerque, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut? ...  We need facts and answers, not the usual CRA / City Hall spin."

The Times story "Lawsuits, failed ventures mark developer's past" looks at Katersky's record and concludes: "Katersky's business career has been entangled in lawsuits over failed ventures and clashes with former partners."

Not to worry. Katersky declares that "I'm proud of my track record," and blames his troubles on  "events far outside their control."

We can at least share that feeling with Katersky when it comes to the CRA -- an agency that operates outside the control of the public which, unlike Pacific Ventures, doesn't have lobbyists from Armbruster Goldsmith & Delvac to look after their interests..

It takes tax dollars that could go to keeping libraries and parks open and gives it to people like Katersky and then takes the tax increments from its subsidized developments and gives it to other developers for projects like his that do nothing for the quality of our lives and don't need subsidies.

If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, United Teachers Los Angeles union head A.J. Duffy has clearly sided with the know-nothings -- something that goes a long way towards explaining the failure of LAUSD over the last three decades.

The LA Times has broken through LAUSD's own commitment to ignorance and provided parents, teachers, students and the general public into how how thousands of students perform on standardized tests over a seven-year period.

It was a long and complex undertaking -- one that has long been sought by many education reformers and could have been done by LAUSD a long time ago if anyone in the failed school system actually wanted to know which teachers improved student test scores and which made them worse.

With the data in hand, the highly paid administrators could have gone back and analyzed what is working and what isn't, why some teachers who are beloved by parents and students consistently have awful outcomes, whether high scores are achieved by teaching to test or by actually helping kids learn English and math.

It would have been revolutionary and still could be if parents use the Times information -- to be published online in a searchable database in the next two weeks -- to demand that the same analysis be conducted system-wide and followed up with in-depth research.

Of course, knowledge of which teachers are good and which are could lead to accountability. Intelligent programs could be designed to help low-performing teachers get better and could lead to their firing if they failed to improve.

Better skills teachers and improved outcomes for students is anathema to Duffy and other union leaders, always has been, always will.

It's why the union has fought all real reform and protected incompetence. It's why public support for public education has waned.

Teachers are trained professionals and need to act like they are and demand to be treated as such. They are like journalists and other white-collar professionals and not accept the one-size-fits-all leveling mentality that makes sense for assembly line workers.

Excellence should be rewarded with six-figure salaries and failure in the classroom should lead to retraining and other measures up to dismissal.

Quality education should be the goal, not mediocrity and failure.

Duffy's answer to the Times' revelations is to call on unionists everywhere to boycott the newspaper.

When Larry Mantle asked him on KPCC today over and over to say what was wrong with knowing how teachers' students performed on standardized tests, Duffy dissembled and evaded, unable to offer a straight answer.

He blamed everyone in the world, attacked the tests and, as usual, defended failure. It's time teachers -- the vast majority of whom are dedicated and capable -- to take control of their union and stand up for what's right for the kids and for themselves.

A city's General Plan lays out the broad guidelines for all new developments that are then refined through community plans that provide detailed rules block by block so that residents and developers know exactly what is allowed and what isn't.

That's the theory anyway and in practice it works that way in many towns.

In LA, however, the General Plan is a meaningless hodgepodge that is vague and contradictory much to the delight of planners, developers and politicians because they can do whatever they want wherever they want.

Even in those rare cases when the community outcry is great enough, the City Council has its own practice of going along with whatever a member wants in his district even if they know it will be hard on the community. To challenge this practice would cause the other 14 members to gang up on the troublemaker and block everything in his or her district.

These are the reasons the neighborhoods in much of the city are deteriorating and community resistance is growing. NIMBYism, after all, is a sane response to powerlessness.

One of the few tools the public has for upsetting this destructive system is the requirement in many cases for environmental impact reports. But now, in the first test of new Planning Director Michael LoGrande's leadership, even that requirement is under threat.

Barely a week ago, activist Joyce Dillard sounded the alarm when she discovered the Planning Department was proposing a sweeping change to the General Plan that could eliminate the need for any EIR in the future.

The proposal is for a "negative declaration" on the need for an EIRl for the "adoption of Citywide Urban Design Guidelines ("Design Guidelines") as an Appendix to the General Plan Framework Element for Multifamily Residential, Mixed-Use, Commercial and Industrial land uses."

urbanguidenegdec.pdf designrchecklist.pdf

"The purpose of the Design Guidelines is twofold: to implement the design values in the 10 Urban Design Principles, a part of the Framework Element, on individual projects; and to consolidate basic Design Guidelines common throughout most Community Plans in one document, allowing
individual New Community Plans to provide tailored, neighborhood-specific Design guidelines. The Design Guidelines will establish design expectations for new development based on Citywide goals, policies and objectives. The Design Guidelines will illustrate ways for individual projects to promote walkability, maintain neighborhood form and character, and promote creative infill development solutions. The Design Guidelines will apply to all new developments and substantial building alterations that require discretionary approvals..."

Just like LoGrande's glib banter about smart growth, the guidelines sound like a progressive step but residents who have taken a keen interest in planning suspect it's just another way of trampling on their interests and concerns.

The process has a lot to do with that. Little notice was given of such a radical change and the public has been given only four weeks to respond to the proposal with the deadline for input Aug. 25.

What's even more amazing is that there isn't a proposal at all. The public is supposed to respond to something that doesn't exist, that will only be written after public comment is closed.

Lucille Saunders of the La Brea Coalition and Cindy Cleghorn of PlanCheckNC and the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council met Thursday with Michelle Sorkin, the planner in charge of this project, to find out first-hand what is going on. You can set up a meeting too by calling Sorkin at (213) 978-1199 or you can fax your comment to her at (213) 978-1226.

Saunders' report on the meeting was sent out under the headline:

Report on Urban Guidelines Neg Dec Meeting:  A FLAWED PLANNING PROCESS

Trust Me...the Planning Department

She described the process as a "travesty," like asking someone: "How was the dinner you'll eat tomorrow night?"

"Trust in the Department of City Planning (DCP) means the department will tell you -- make the decision -- before you have the opportunity to know the facts yourself ... We cannot trust the process which is fundamentally fatally flawed.  It is this process which must be changed. It simply is not planning."

Sorkin was told the process is "backwards," asking people to comment before the proposal is written. Her answer: "We always do it this way."

"Trust us, they imply ... But experiences have taught us once the Staff Report has been written--and that process unanimously recommends the Commission accept the decision (Just trust us!), terms are rarely changed."  

The Planninig Department is in a great rush to push this through by holding three informational public meetings on Aug. 30 and 31 and then the guidelines will go to the Planning Commission and the City Council to be rubber-stamped.

This is exactly what so many planning experts feared when LoGrande was appointed to succeed Gail Goldberg because he lacked real qualifications for the job beyond an obedient nature to carry out orders methodically and expeditiously.

Planning is too important to be done this way. The state of the city too fragile. City Hall's credibility is too low to act in such an imperious way.